The Tipi project, which had always been a childhood dream of mine lasted three months and was completed in December 2007! I built an authentic Sioux Tipi using plans from the Laubin’s famous book ‘The Indian Tipi’. The whole project took approximately seventy hours to complete and involved a considerable amount of sewing (cover) and planing (poles). I have had to take down the tipi during the wet season as the fabric is very prone to mildew when constantly exposed to the humidity and rain.

Photography by Jonathan Tolhurst using a Nikon D50 Digital SLR. The full beauty of the sky was captured through the use of a polarising filter. The Flash slideshow was transferred from my previous website in February 2008.

Work has shut down for Christmas so I am on holiday until the 6th of January. Lisa’s family are visiting for Christmas so we will be busy entertaining. We will hopefully do a little fishing and make the most of the seven metre tides and full moon. The weather has been very hot and humid, particularly during the day although I have managed to get the yard and beach front tidied up and looking good. We have also been planning and budgeting for the coming year. Apart from that, we are just looking forward to a great 2008…..

We are in to the final month of the year and I have been busy with the National Prescribing Service educational visiting program on Osteoporosis. At home I have spent quite a bit of time hanging out in my tipi which really looks the part now. Lisa’s family arrive in a few weeks for Christmas. I have two weeks off over Christmas to join in the festivities. Off the beach there have been plenty of Tuna around.

I have had a busy few days. On Thursday and Friday of last week I kayaked over to flat top island. I checked out the lighthouse which is sadly being left to fall into disrepair. I also took some photographs which can be viewed on the Flat Top island photographs page. I also checked the geocache that we placed on the island in May. Yesterday I finally erected the Tipi which I have been building over the past couple of months. You can check out the photographs on the tipi photographs page. Project information is available on the tipi project page.

The past month I have been spending my spare time working on completing my authentic Sioux tipi. This has involved a considerable amount of sewing of canvas on a heavy duty sewing machine, not to mention three full days of using an electric plane to produce the lodge poles from lengths of two-by-four. Out on the water there have been a few Mackerel around but I have not managed to catch one in the last few weeks.

This weekend we had a family fishing competition down here at Louisa Creek with prizes awarded for the first, biggest and smallest fish caught. The competition was a great success with the fishing continuing into the early hours of the morning. I spent Wednesday in Brisbane for an interesting National Prescribing Service therapeutic briefing on Osteoporosis. I also began work making a large tipi which will hopefully be ready for Christmas.

In the past week I have been privileged to kayak with a fifteen metre humpback whale and also a school of approximately twenty dolphin. I spent about an hour with the whale as it hung out near dudgeon point. The whole experience was one of the most amazing few hours of my life as she swam inquisitively around me.

I have spent the last couple of days going out on the kayak – there are plenty of Mackerel around at present, if I could only keep them on the line long enough. In the past week I have been out west to Glenden and up North to Airlie Beach with work. Glenden is a couple of hours drive West from Mackay, whilst Airlie Beach is two hours north.

I have just returned from the annual National Prescribing Service facilitator conference which was held down at Brighton le Sands on Botany Bay. The conference was held over two days and included a number of workshops, informative talks and lots of networking. On the Friday I managed to go downtown to do a little shopping and also visit the Sydney international boat show on Darling Harbour.